


said She

by trascendenza



Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Genre: Ambiguity, F/F, POV Female Character, layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The place you leave isn't always the place you come back to. <em>"It will only be a matter of time until you remember how to forget," said She, her fingers spider-walking downwards to tighten the laces.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	said She

"Oh, darling," said She, with a twisting pull of twisted fingers through twisted hair, "you most certainly can't believe everything you hear."

"But I have heard so very much," said the girl, the vertebrae in her neck creaking as she craned her view upwards, "surely some of it must be true."

"What I mean to say," said She, leaning down and brushing a sharp cheekbone along the girl's apple-rounded face, "is that you can believe exactly nothing that you hear, and least of all anything that you believe."

"Well, then," said the girl, sighing a small sigh of confusion amidst a rain of twisted curls, "I suppose I shan't believe in anything."

"See that you don't," said She, the tips of her lips reaching nearly to the corners of her eyes when She smiled.

*

"I thought you were meant to be fighting," said the girl, her two feet forming a small black triangle on the white-marbled floor. Her dress flared out around her calves like a large bell.

"It is against my vows to fight," said the White, laying one hand gracefully over her sister's, "and I love my sister dearly."

"Getting lost in the layers again, are we?" said She, reaching out a hand for the girl. Her lips pursed into a tiny, misshapen heart. It was a sympathetic shape.

"I am not," said the girl. She did not stomp one of her black shoes; she did not need to. "It is simply that the last time I was here, the two of you could hardly stand the sight of each other."

"Bygones are best gone by the by," said the Hatter, materializing in a waft behind them, head tilted at a chipper angle.

"Moreover," said She, and then looked at her sister the White, who deftly picked up the sentence where She left off, "it's not as if we've forgotten where we came from."

"And where is that?" said the girl.

The three laughed and laughed and laughed, red and white and orange all blurring together.

*

"I shall teach you everything I know," said She, smoothing her smooth fingertips over smooth silk. "We shall be the best of friends."

"I still might go back, you know," said the girl, her chin tilted defiantly upward. Her once-bony shoulders were round under the dress made of Absalom's cocoon and fit well into palms. "I haven't forgotten how."

"It will only be a matter of time until you remember how to forget," said She, her fingers spider-walking downwards to tighten the laces.

"Yes," said the girl, watching the red sun rise over the red flowers in the red garden, "I think that is true."

*

"But how can you love her?" said the girl, looking from the White to the Hatter to the Hound in turn. "After all of it?"

"Oh, you mean all of," the Hatter twirled his hands in the air, one going clockwise and the other going counterclockwise, and neither actually wise to a clock in the least, "that?"

"Yes," said the girl, wiggling her fingers in the air, the tone of her voice evoking images of beasts and scrolls and imprinted horrors, "all of that. Did it mean nothing?"

"It meant a great deal," said the White melodiously, her fingers fluttering in agreement.

"A great deal," agreed the Hound.

"To us all," concluded the Hatter.

"And to _her_?" said the girl, evidently unable to accept that the world she thought to be of her dreams would not conform to her internal compass of sensemaking.

"Why," said the Hatter, laying a hand on the girl's shoulder and looking at her with the deep fondness one might direct at a poor being who has just learned that the world is only round because it turns itself inside out every day, "to her most of all."

*

"I will not love you," said the girl, her voice somewhere between a warning, a promise, and a lie. Her head was nestled in the acute hollow between the legs underneath the red dress.

"There'll be no need of that," said She, unconcerned. She gazed downward so that their eyes were directly across from each other, chins lined up to foreheads. The girl's face was upside down and vanishingly small, like a figure retreating on the horizon. "That's what the subjects are for."

"I will not have subjects," said the girl, frowning delicately. The wrinkles on her face were like small jests, a parody of maturity on her spring-fresh skin.

"Silly girl, you don't have a choice in the matter," said She, poking the tip of the girl's nose with a sharpened fingernail that left a tiny, perfect imprint.

The girl arched her neck up, nipping after the finger as it withdrew. "I don't believe you," she proclaimed, her teeth clicking back into place. "I don't believe a word that you say, to be wholly honest."

"Oh," said She, purring a bit in the back of her throat. She tapped the girl's bottom lip the way one might lower a scepter on the shoulder of a knight. "The child is learning."

"Yes," said the girl, smiling primly and with deep satisfaction, "I think that is true."


End file.
